Let’s Go Tribe: Tom Hamilton interview

Tom Hamilton has the Best Home Run call in all of People Business.

LGT: There’s been a kind of evolution in statistical analysis and understanding of baseball. How much weight do you give to this broader statistical analysis?

TH: We get all the statistical information we need in advance of games. But I really think for my purposes, you have to be careful. You can number people to death. People will go numb if you use too many numbers. I know I do. If I hear a broadcast and they’re stuck on numbers, I stop listening. I prefer the numbers that fans recognize and can relate to, home runs, RBIs, runs, batting average, on base percentage. Some of these newfangled numbers, I’m sure they have a place. But I don’t get into the wins and replacement numbers—it’s too much. You can make numbers say whatever you want them to say. I’m not saying these new stats don’t have a place, but I hear some broadcasters talking about a guy’s ERA on Tuesdays under a full moon while pitching left-handed. Who cares? Fans are not accountants. This is still a people business, and I think sometimes people forget that.

LGT:There’s a Facebook page called Tom Hamilton Has the Best Home Run Call in Baseball. Are you aware of it?

TH: I don’t do Facebook. My kids do. I don’t do twitter. Now, I do have a computer. I do internet and email, but I don’t do a lot of that new stuff.

Hitter Volatility Through Mid-June | FanGraphs Baseball

Evan Longoria (4.3 PA/G) is currently your most consistent hitter, sitting at 28% better than league average. That’s great news for the Rays considering he has a 154 wRC+ so far in 2013. Not only is producing at an extremely high level offensively, but his performance has been quite consistent, game-to-game.

Contrast that to the Marlins’ Placido Polanco. Polanco (4.2 PA/G) has the sixth-best VOL so far this year, but he’s hitting 41% worse than league average. That means the Marlins are getting a steady dose of bad from their third baseman on pretty much a daily basis.

Schoenfield: Scherzer has turned into another Detroit ace

The Cone of Silence can’t drop on Dan Plesac quick enough.

I still like pitcher wins, warts and blemishes and gaping scars and all. Are pitcher wins perfect? Of course not. Should they be the first recourse in evaluating a pitcher’s performance? Of course not. Should they be discarded into the trash bin of ill-advised statistics, like the game-winning RBI? Of course not.

So I think it’s pretty cool that Max Scherzer is now 10-0, the first pitcher to win his first 10 decisions to begin a season since Roger Clemens started 11-0 for the Blue Jays in 1997. Does it take some good luck and run support to go 10-0? Sure it does; only 12 pitchers before Scherzer since 1916 have started 10-0 or better (Clemens did it twice, also going 14-0 in 1986), so it takes good pitching and good fortune, and Scherzer has certainly done the former and received the latter.

Monday’s performance was a little of both, as Scherzer handcuffed the high-scoring Orioles other than a Chris Davis home run in the Tigers’ 5-1 victory. But he ran up his pitch count and made it through just six innings, needing the bullpen to hold on, which it did; or rather, Drew Smyly did, retiring the final nine batters. So Scherzer improved to 10-0 with a 3.08 ERA, racking up 10 more strikeouts to move into second in the majors behind Yu Darvish with 116. Only Darvish has allowed a lower opponents’ batting average.

...From that start to the end of the season, Scherzer went 11-3 with a 2.53 ERA, cutting his home runs to 10 in 117.1 innings and doing a better job pitching out of jams. Over a calendar year he has gone 21-3 in 33 starts with a 2.78 ERA and 259 strikeouts in 213.1 innings. Justin Verlander is still the ace of the Tigers, but Scherzer has turned into ace 1A.

If there’s a scary thing about Scherzer—at least for Tigers opponents—it’s that there’s still room for him to get better. He has held batters to a .162 average with the bases empty, but that jumps to .255 with runners on base. That figure has improved from last year.

So, yes, go ahead and ignore Scherzer’s 10-0 record if you wish. I’m going to keep watching until he loses. And when he finally does—and he will—I’ll still watch because this guy has become one of the game’s best.

Farnsworth: Breaking Down the Swing - Best Hitters of 2012

To counteract the Manmohan Singh Primer… the search for objective knowledge about hitting mechanics.

I compiled a list of the top 50 hitters from the 2012 season according to Fangraphs’ Batting component of WAR.  I then looked at side views of each of these hitters from highlights of the 2012 season in which each player hit a homerun.  In the case of switch hitters, I used the side of the plate where they were most successful.  In all but Melky Cabrera’s 2012 stats, that described their left-handed swings.  I then took a series of over 60 discrete, objective measurements of each player’s swing using Don Slaught’s Right View Pro video analysis software to ascertain ranges of values.  I also wanted to see if any of these moves had even a slight correlation to the kind of hitters they were last season.

With defensive shifts on the rise in baseball, Orioles among leading proponents

Manager Buck Showalter downplays the notion that he suddenly found religion on the shift.

“People were doing it years ago,” he says. “It’s not something new. Ask [1960s slugger] Willie McCovey. But a lot of it then was really tough, because you were basing it on just what your gut told you.”

...Orioles closer Jim Johnson, a ground-ball pitcher when he’s throwing well, says the shift has become too popular. “It’s fine on certain guys, but I think sometimes it gets a little carried away,” he says. “Trying to do things just to do things, you know. If you’re shifting on a No. 8 hitter, just because [the numbers] say he grounds out to the right side, and you’ve got a guy throwing 99mph that he’s probably not going to turn around, then why are you shifting?”

Red Sox consultant Bill James, an ally of the guys at Baseball Info Solutions on most issues, has argued that the shift is a loser in the long run.

In a 2012 piece for his website, James wrote: “My belief, based on nine years of watching teams shift to try to stop David Ortiz, is that it doesn’t work, and that, while obviously the shift does lead to plays being made on balls that would otherwise get through the right side of the infield, this is offset or more than offset by plays that are lost at other places.”

...Tampa Bay first base coach George Hendrick flat-out told Chris Davis the Rays would be thrilled if he tried to tap the ball to left field instead of hitting it over the fence. So he says he has put the shift out of his mind.

“A lot of fans have asked why I don’t bunt, but that would be playing right into their hands,” says Davis, off to the hottest start in baseball. “I’ve hit a lot of balls over the shift or through it. And those are the ones I enjoy, where I just drill one through there.”

Thanks to CB.

Rosenthal: Team that gave us Moneyball ditching HR’s for BB’s & OBP - and W’s

Harold Reynolds: “The A’s aren’t walking a lot.”

Last season, when the A’s won the AL West, they mostly walked and hit homers — their .238 batting average ranked next-to-last in the AL, and they struck out more than any team in the league.

This season, their identity is different due to the acquisitions of two quality hitters, catcher John Jaso and shortstop Jed Lowrie, and emergence of a third, third baseman Josh Donaldson.

The A’s grind down opposing starters — they’re first in the league in walk rate and second in pitches per plate appearance. They’ve dropped from sixth in the AL to 12th in home-run rate, but improved from last to eighth in strikeout rate and from eighth to sixth in runs per game.

The impact of strikeouts on a team’s offense is hotly debated, but A’s general manager Billy Beane clearly felt that he needed to mix in some contact hitters among such high-strikeout types as Josh Reddick and Brandon Moss.

It’s working, as evidenced by the Athletics’ .603 winning percentage, second-best in the AL. It’s working, even though the team’s $60.7 million Opening Day payroll was the fourth lowest in the majors.

Oh, and by the way, the rotation ERA during the last 26 games is 2.52. And the A’s could get left-hander Brett Anderson back after the All-Star break and turn to red-hot Triple-A righty Sonny Gray should the need arise.

YES Network: An interview with Ken Singleton

Terrific (yet clutch) interview with Singleton.

MW: I found that my personal appreciation of the game has increased exponentially as I’ve explored sabermetrics. I know there is a group of fans out there (and maybe they’re even the majority of fans) who cringe at the new age stats – can’t have the nerds ruining baseball with all their numbers! For me though, the metrics are not diminishing the game, rather they’re merely elaborating on what our eyes see. The “mystique,” if that’s what you want to call it, hasn’t disappeared at all. If anything, it’s grown substantially now that I can further appreciate more of what I see.

KS: Exactly. Exactly, Matt. But the one thing I would caution, though, is that the numbers don’t really tell you about the heart of a player. I mean, who are the real competitors? I’ve always said that when you get in the playoffs – and I like to see game sevens mind you – you see who your real players are. For example, in his last game with the Yankees, Hideki Matsui drove in six runs! He knew it was going to be his last game with the Yankees. He ended up as the MVP of the World Series back in 2009 against the Phillies. And to me, he was a very clutch player, and the Yankees miss someone like him. He was a clutch player throughout his time with the Yankees and those are the types of players I really admire and sometimes those moments can’t necessarily be captured simply.

MW: I think you may laugh at this. I’m almost certain this isn’t the best comparison. But, the first name that came to my mind – and please know I mean no offense to anyone – is Nick Swisher. For lack of a better term, I think he’s kind of a “poor man’s” version of you. His approach at the plate seems kind of similar though.

KS: [Laughs] That’s pretty good. His OBP is pretty good. Umm, nothing against Nick, but I think I was a bit more of a clutch player than him. I think my playoff record speaks to that. I see what you mean though, though my batting average was better too.

Bernhardt: Albert Pujols is now just ‘average’

That’s how far Albert Pujols has fallen in the year-and-change since moving from St. Louis to Orange County. Last year, he was a victim of a very poor start to the season which colored everyone’s perception the rest of the way, but come June he hit his stride, with a .941 OPS the rest of the way. This June has also been his best month of the year so far, but whereas last June he hit .326/.409/.568 (.977), this June has only seen him hit .262/.327/.548 (.874) so far. A slugging-heavy .874 OPS is a nice thing to have from a lot of players, even if only over half a month of plate appearances, but Pujols isn’t one of them. When the Angels signed him to a ten-year, $240 million contract in the 2011 offseason, they clearly expected more production out of the future Hall-of-Famer—though even at the time it was highly likely that the back end of the contract would end up paying for the production at the front end, as well as the premium for Pujols being a free agent.

Pujols, 33, is a future Hall of Famer (with the standard boilerplate disclaimer about what happens to his chances if PED use is ever alleged), but not all future Hall of Famers are created equally. Instead of having a sustained mastery of the league for 15 to 20 years like a Ted Williams or Barry Bonds, it’s entirely possible that when the book is closed on Albert Pujols’s career, his case will look a lot more like Jimmie Foxx’s than anyone in the Angels organization would currently like to admit.

The Beast of Yucka Flats?

...Luckily Pujols hasn’t taken a nasty beanball the way Foxx has, but he does have a fairly well known chronic injury of his own: plantar fasciitis in his left foot. At the beginning of the season, Abby Sims at CBSNewYork wrote a very helpful rundown of what that injury is, what it does to an athlete, and how to treat it; if you haven’t already, you should read it. The essential takeaway is that unless Pujols is willing to undergo a major surgery to lengthen the fascia—which may or may not provide significant relief, and certainly isn’t a guaranteed fix—there’s nothing really to do with the condition but work around it. While a 15-day DL trip would be nice to get the foot some rest, simple “rest” doesn’t fix the condition, and the Angels can hardly afford to lose even an .800 OPS bat in their lineup at this point in the season.

Margalus: Jose Bautista demonstrates a lesson in lineup construction for Hawk Harrelson

Joey Bats: Show-up time.

As Jose Bautista came to the plate as the second hitter of the game, Steve Stone noted that Bautista was the rare slugger in the No. 2 hole. He couldn’t really explain it, but that didn’t stop him and Hawk Harrelson from attempting to discredit it.

  Stone: One of the reasons why Bautista’s hitting second—and we wondered about that—was that Alex Anthopoulos, their general manager, feels that the best hitter in your lineup should hit second. And this is a guy that will make this offense go if he gets hot. We didn’t see him in that first series in Toronto. He’s back, and making a difference.

  Hawk: I like Alex ... but I’d like for him to give me a definitive reason on why he thinks the best hitter in his lineup should hit second.

  Stone: A great advocate of sabermetrics.

  Hawk: Getting ready to say, numbers come in there someplace.

  Stone: Yeah, they do.

  Hawk. [laughs]

  Stone: And so they put him in the two-spot. And there he is.

  Hawk: Well, he did good last night. [Bautista swings and misses for a 3-2 count] Well, I like Alex. He’s done a good job, there’s no question. He can’t be charged with all these injuries that they’ve had. But I totally disagree with your best hitter hitting second, and I guess—[Bautista takes a curve for strike three]—there, he gone! Two down!—and I guess for 130something years, other people have disagreed with him as well.

  Stone: The best hitter is usually your third hitter.

...If the Blue Jays have reinvented the No. 2 hitter among their personnel, that’s great. If a team hasn’t embraced it top to bottom, no big deal. The difference between a “perfect” lineup and a respectable lineup is practically imperceptible anyway. Basically, I’d like to see some willingness to dabble in unconventional construction, but as long as there aren’t any black holes in the first top five or six spots, I’m happy.

Still, Hawk’s one-sided slagging brought out the militant sabermetrician in me in the ninth inning. Bautista came to the plate with two outs and nobody on and representing the tying run, and it was just too rich. Had Stone and Hawk written out the lineup card, Bautista would’ve only been on deck while a lesser hitter tried to keep the game alive for Toronto.

I couldn’t help but fight smug with smug at the prospect (and then realization) of Bautista illustrating the sabermetric rationale. I enjoyed it more than I should, considering the outcome.

Japan baseball chiefs admit lying over ball change

Kunio Shimoda…I hear the Trost - Levine regime is hiring.

After months of denial and an inexplicably huge surge in home runs, Japan’s baseball chiefs have admitted they secretly switched the design of the ball to make the game more exciting.

Players and fans had repeatedly quizzed Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) bosses after seeing a 40 percent rise in the number of balls that were slugged out of the park so far this season.

In April NPB said the specifications of their ball—each of which bears the signature of its commissioner Ryozo Kato—“have not been changed”, a statement that was repeated several times since.

But on Tuesday NPB came clean, saying they had asked manufacturer Mizuno to “adjust” the ball to give it greater bounce off the bat and demanded the company keep quiet about the switch.

“Our understanding was that it would be a matter of fine-tuning,” NPB secretary general Kunio Shimoda said.

“We thought it would cause confusion if we let it be known.”

...Mizuno initially said the increase was due to foreign batters hitting so many home runs and was also related to the higher number of games being played in domed stadiums, where wind is not a factor, Kyodo News reported. 

But union chairman Motohiro Shima said it was important the organisation was honest because it affected statistics.

“The numbers of home runs and .300 hitters (considered a high batting average) has apparently increased. The earned runs average of pitchers has worsened,” he said.

“It has affected players who signed deals on the results of performances in the years when the uniform ball was introduced.”

Japanese media on Wednesday lashed out at the NPB commissioner, accusing him of lying to the baseball-crazy nation.

“The commissioner’s words and deeds, which lacked probity, raise questions over whether he should resign,” the influential daily Asahi Shimbun said.

How the Red Sox set themselves up to win the scouting war | The Providence Journal

Part one of a three-part examination of the Red Sox advance scouting system.The Red Sox are smart. What makes them smart isn’t a sabermetric slant. It’s a willingness to find and use any information they can find which can give their players an edge. 

Here’s part two: Information overload has transformed the nature of advance scouting.

Baer: Ryan Howard Is A Shadow of His Former Self

In The Beginning Was The End…

It is June 10 and Ryan Howard has seven home runs in 231 trips to the plate. Seven home runs used to constitute a good week for the slugger. Among full seasons, his previous low for home runs on June 10 was ten in 2010. His .185 isolated power this year is 90 points below his career average and his .306 weighted on-base average nearly matches his output last year when he was hobbled by his Achilles.

The biggest and most obvious change is that Howard struggles with fastballs a lot more than he used to. Back in 2011, he hit fastballs for a .345 ISO and .417 wOBA. This year, those numbers are .157 and .310. The numbers improve only marginally if you limit the sample to right-handed pitching.

Here’s a graphical look at the evolution — or de-evolution, if you prefer — of his performance against fastballs from right-handed pitchers in 2011 and in 2013.

...He says he has been dealing with a sore knee over the past couple weeks, but it wouldn’t explain his season-long struggle with fastballs. Howard was already easily-neutralized by employing an infield shift, bringing in lefty relievers late in the game, and by giving him nothing but sliders low and away. But now that he can barely punish pitchers who dare to throw him fastballs, he is feared about as much as Erik Kratz (.307 wOBA).

At what point does the team admit their $125 million star first baseman is over the hill and needs to be dropped in the lineup in favor of more productive players? When do they suck it up and platoon Howard at first with John Mayberry or some other right-handed bat? When will they attempt to do with him what the Angels did with Vernon Wells? If this team has dreams of competing, if not this year then next year, it cannot be with Howard continuing to be used in his present capacity.

Jay Jaffe: Why did Kirk Gibson let Ian Kennedy throw 50 pitches in an inning?

Gauge Ramifrying Inning Tosses?

By the time the dust settled, Kennedy had thrown an alarming total of 50 pitches in the inning — the second-highest single-inning total in the majors this year, and the highest by a Diamondback since Doug Davis threw 44 in an inning on June 10, 2009 — long before Gibson was manager. Asked about his starter after the game, Gibson told MLB.com:

  “We need around 100 [pitches] from him, no matter what…

  “I didn’t have a choice… It happened quick. You wouldn’t expect it to get away from him — but it did. You don’t ever want to leave anybody in that long.”

It wasn’t exactly clear why Gibson was so insistent on Kennedy throwing 100 pitches or why the manager was so slow with his hook. Arizona won a 14-inning game on Tuesday, but among the relievers Gibson used in that game, only Josh Collmenter had thrown more than 22 pitches, and in Wednesday’s win, the team needed just 21 pitches from three relievers over 2 1/3 innings.

...Kennedy doesn’t appear to have any significant health concerns to explain his decline. He recently missed a turn due to a laceration on his finger, but had thrown seven innings and 89 pitches in his previous outing on June 1. His fastball velocity has remained relatively stable – around 90 mph – since coming to the Diamondbacks for the 2010 season, and after flagging midway through the fourth last night, it recovered, though by that point he found himself well in the proverbial weeds.

It’s entirely possible that Kennedy’s epic inning won’t leave any lasting mark. But particularly so long as he continues to struggle, it’s worth keeping an eye on his performance — and the way Gibson handles his pitchers.

ESPN: Why are Trout’s defensive numbers so bad?

Looks like this Trout’s fielding stats may be a bit fishy ...

We talked to a scout—one who has seen Trout play more than 20 times in person over the past two seasons. He was as surprised by the numbers as we were and felt they were not a good measure of his overall skills. He offered this assessment:

“The great thing about Trout is that he has exceptional baseball instincts and exceptional speed to close on balls. He has tremendous body control and great natural ability. He’s very fluid in his actions and that allows him to do things body-control wise that others can’t do.”

So while the numbers say one thing, it doesn’t sound like there is any thought that the numbers from the first third of this season will hold up for the long term.

“Put it this way,” the scout said, “I’d rather he be in position to get the 27th out of the game than anyone else.”

Keri: Watch Out for Crush Davis

As Jonah points out…“Chris Davis feature with enough stats and .gifs to choke a horse.‏”  Peakness Stakes, if you will…

For the first 1,495 at-bats of his career, Chris Davis looked like a thousand big, lumbering, mediocre sluggers before him. He didn’t run well and didn’t field well. He had a terrible batting approach, one that could best be described as swing for the moon, then offer every fan on the third-base side a nice, cool breeze. Sure, he would close his eyes and launch balls fairly often. But those home runs felt like empty calories, brief flashes of good feelings that ultimately gave way to replacement-level regret.

There has been nothing empty about what has happened since. More than one-third of the way through the 2013 campaign, it’s Davis — not Miguel Cabrera or any of the superstars you’d expect — who leads the majors in virtually every advanced offensive metric imaginable. Davis is hitting .356/.436/.740 so far in 2013. On a park-, league-, and era-adjusted basis, that’s tied for the 19th-best season in baseball history. The guy who most closely resembled players like Jay Gibbons and Phil Plantier through age 26 is hitting like Babe Ruth at age 27.

...It is still only (early) June; far too early to prorate Davis’s stats out to October and pencil him in for a Babe Ruth–caliber season. So far, 30.8 percent of the fly balls Davis has hit this season have gone for home runs. Yes, Davis is exceptionally strong, and sure, maybe he has figured out how to control the strike zone. But if that HR/FB rate holds, it would be the eighth-highest result for any full-time player since that stat started getting tracked in 2002. It would lap Davis’s career mark of 20.9 percent and even his sky-high rate of 25.2 percent in 2012. One sign of progress this year has been a sharp drop in Davis’s strikeout rate, from about 30 percent in 2011, 2012, and for his career to 23.0 percent this season. Still, it’s nearly impossible for a hitter to bat .356 all year while striking out nearly one-quarter of the time. As it turns out, there’s an excellent reason for that lofty batting average: Davis is hitting .409 on balls in play (i.e., the ones that have not sailed out of the park), the second-highest BABIP in all of baseball. Davis owning a high BABIP isn’t completely nuts, given that he ranks among the league’s most prolific line-drive hitters, a skill he has owned throughout his career. But again, some perspective is in order. If Davis’s .409 batting average on balls in play were to hold, it would tie for the eighth-highest mark by any hitter since 1900.

So yes, some regression might be in order. But that doesn’t mean we should expect him to fall apart. We have mounting visual and statistical evidence that he has made important adjustments — spitting on pitches he can’t hit, staying back on pitches he can, and rocketing them all over the ballpark when he does. Chris Davis is a player, and he crushes a lot.

Strauss: Cards’ offense taking a different route

How is St. Louis fending off the Reds and Pirates? Grinding, says hitting coach John F. Mabry.

Mabry uses terms like “process” and “grinding” almost interchangeably. Mind-set is as important to success as technique.

Mabry knows that style carries lots of weight in a market that loves to reminisce about Whitey-ball, which was played on a rug with lots of fast guys, two elements this club no longer boasts. (Nobody in the NL has attempted fewer steals than the Cardinals’ 17.) The new mantra is lengthy at-bats, better two-strike approaches and a willingness to execute an opposite-field line drive rather than a pull-hooked crank.

“We’re not trying not to hit home runs. We’re just going about the right approach for each individual guy,” Matheny asserted. “They’re grinding at-bats. We are preaching that. The overall theme is to have tough at-bats, top to bottom. We’re not backing off. We’re trying to drive the ball deep. But that doesn’t mean when we get in a situation where we need to hit a ball hard we’re not trying to find out a way to do it.”

Betzold: Tigers’ defense is letting them down late in games

And a dread of some strange Impemba doom…

For weeks, the Fox Sports Detroit TV announcers kept crowing that the Tigers had the fewest errors in the league, and that proved they must be a great defensive team, as if fielding percentage were a meaningful measure of defensive prowess. It hasn’t been, at least not for the past 30 years, since Bill James arrived on the scene.

It’s really quite simple: in order to be charged with an error, you have to reach a batted ball. And if you have poor range, you don’t get there. Without good range, you’re usually handling relatively easy chances, so voila, fewer errors.

...At the end of May, according to ESPN.com, Detroit had a decent infield if you measured it with the highly flawed, old-fashioned tool, fielding percentage. Prince Fielder (.996), Omar Infante (.986), Jhonny Peralta (.986), and Miguel Cabrera (.961), were 17th, 18th, 13th, and 14th respectively among all MLB regulars at their positions: in other words, all resting in the middle-of-the-pack.

But if you look at the other two defensive stats used by ESPN.com, the picture is gloomier. In defensive WAR (wins above replacement), Fielder is -0.8 (tied for 27th out of 30). Infante is 0.4, tied for 8th. Peralta is 0.5, or 13th. Cabrera is -0.5, which leaves him tied for dead last.

As far as range factor, the tally is: Fielder next-to-last, Infante 18th, Peralta 17th, and, as you might expect, Cabrera last.

What these numbers, taken together, tell you is that the Tigers are average up the middle, better at second than at short, and statuesque at the corners (not in the sense of beautiful, but with the meaning of largely immobile).

Bill James Mailbag - 5/29/13 - 6/1/13

From 2005-present, the AL is .553 (2106 games) [against the NL]...

This is an issue that I was just completely wrong about.    For years, asked about the relative strength of the leagues, I would say that I didn’t see how there could be a significant disparity between them.  The teams in the two leagues draft players from the same talent pool.  They send players to the same minor leagues to develop them, and they play against each other in those leagues.  They trade players between the leagues, and they sign free agents from the same pool of talent.  In those circumstances, how can a significant talent disparity develop?

But obviously I was wrong; once they started playing head to head the American League, over a space of thousands of games, has beaten the National League as consistently as a championship team beats a .500 team, which is a tremendously significant disparity.

What is your theory as to why or how the American League has become superior to the National league, despite all the reasons you cite as to why this shouldn’t happen?...

When the Yankees in the late 1990s developed such a fantastic team, the rest of the American League East had to run harder to keep pace.  The strength of the division was a result of the other teams undertaking the necessary effort to stay close to the Yankees.

isn’t the AL operating at a disadvantage in the differences in the rules? For games in AL parks, the AL team doesn’t do anything different than usual, and the NL team gets to use an extra hitter (well, assuming they HAVE one) who’d otherwise be riding the bench, which I’d count as an advantage. For games in NL parks, the NL team doesn’t do anything different than usual, and the AL team has to GIVE UP their DH, which I’d count as a disadvantage…

Why is it that I imagine that if both teams had to give up their second baseman for interleague series, you would argue that was an advantage for the National League teams as well?

...I found a 2011 article that states the AL’s winning percentage in interleague play was 52.3% until that time, but 57.8% in AL parks. If I have the math right, that suggests a 46.8% winning percentage in NL parks. In other words, the disparity is the result of the AL’s home field advantage greatly outstripping the NL’s home field advantage, and that would seem to have to do mostly with the DH. No?

No.  First of all, you get the 52% by using ALL interleague games going back to the mid-1990s, which includes several years in which the leagues were about even.  Second, a much more sustainable interpretation of that data would be that the home field advantage was the same for both leagues, but that the American League just had better teams.

Lennon: Baseball’s new execs are Ivy Leaguers

Or…Google Boy wannabes more popular than Jesus now.

Remember wanting to play for the Yankees when you grew up? The next generation is more interested in running them—or at least drafting and signing the players, maybe even overhauling the farm system.

“If you go back 25, 30 years, the opportunities didn’t exist,’’ Sandy Alderson said. “First of all, front offices were smaller, staffs were smaller, and they came from more traditional sources. Now they come from traditional sources but others as well because the expertise necessary today is a lot broader and more varied than it used to be.

“Statistics are a particular methodology for player evaluation. And not only do you have to be on top of that methodology, but in some cases, thinking about the next big thing.’‘

That’s true of any industry. Look at Apple, Google or Facebook. It just wasn’t thought about much in baseball before the last big thing, which is known by its Hollywood-celebrated brand name: “Moneyball.’‘

Boiled down to its most elemental ingredients, Moneyball introduced on-base percentage to the masses as a revolutionary concept of evaluating players.

...That’s the challenge for the next generation of aspiring baseball executives, who fell in love with advanced metrics but are unsure of how to take their relationship to the next level. Now that the Moneyball revolution is over and the analytics crowd has settled into a period of detente with traditionalists, where is the next big thing going to come from? And who will invent it?

Miles: Dale Sveum, meet Pythagoras

Hypotinuse or not?

I’m not sure how far Cubs manager Dale Sveum got in mathematics with the Pythagorean Theorem. As most of you know, you can calculate a team’s “Pythagorean” or “expected” won-loss record based on its run differential. I’ll spare you the details here.

Despite their actual won-loss record of 22-30, the Cubs go into this afternoon’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks with a run differential of plus-6, having outscored their opponents 214-208. Their Pythagorean, or expected, won-loss record with that run differential should be 27-25.

“We’ve been in pretty much every single game of the year,” Sveum said. “We’ve had a couple of blowouts. It’s a very odd record for the run differential, that’s for sure, because at one point, we were 11 or 12 games under .500, and it was still really, really good. Now, we’re winning four in a row, and it comes back to earth a little bit. It’s a very strange run differential for being under .500.”

We touched on this yesterday, but the Cubs have seen 43 of their 52 games (83 percent) decided by 4 or fewer runs, 38 decided by 3 or fewer runs and 29 decided by 2 or fewer. The Cubs have gone 13-25 in games decided by 3 runs or fewer, and 18 of the Cubs’ 30 losses have been by 2 runs or fewer. The Cubs are 7-12 in 1-run games.

I asked Dale if he paid attention to the “expected” win-loss record.

“I don’t have to look at any of that; I just know by the way we’ve played,” he said. “Early on, we gave so many games away that it was tough to recover from that. The bullpen problems. Obviously, we played some pretty shady defense the first month of the season. That’s gotten better. Obviously, we’ve shored up the bullpen. Guys have been doing a good job in the bullpen. So you start winning more games that way instead of giving them away.”

MLB: Votto and Choo are down with OBP

Dusty Baker, not so much. (quickly heads over to chemicalland21.com for product updates)

It is some kind of oddity or irony or sabermetric injustice that they are providing this OBP assault in the first one-third of a lineup drawn up nightly by the man oft-associated with being anti-OBP. But Dusty Baker, who once famously made the observation that “clogging up the bases isn’t that great to me,” will tell you he’s not so much anti-OBP as he is anti-OBP obsession. OBP, he said, means nothing if it’s not followed by RBI, and in Choo and Votto, he finds equal parts fascination and frustration.

“They should be [ranked] one and two in runs scored,” Baker said. “There have been quite a few times they’ve been left out there. You can get on base all you want to, but if you don’t have guys driving you in, it doesn’t matter.”

Now, Votto ranks first in the Majors in runs scored (44) and Choo ranks sixth (40), while the Reds lead the National League in runs scored (255) and cleanup hitter Brandon Phillips leads the league in RBIs (43). You could, therefore, certainly accuse Baker of nitpicking here.

With that said, the Reds also lead the Majors in runners left on base (410), and No. 2 hitter Zack Cozart and No. 5 hitter Jay Bruce (both with 99) are atop the NL in that category. So Baker does have a point about the Reds not exactly making the most of this unique OBP opportunity.

“It’s not called walking, it’s called hitting,” Baker said, and that sound you just heard was a sabermetrician slapping his forehead. “You’re trying to get a hit.”

...Votto was swinging at just 60 percent of strikes through the first three weeks of the season, and the numbers showed the results of his restraint. Through 17 games, he had 24 walks but just 14 hits, only three of which had gone for extra bases. People wondered aloud if maybe he was taking this OBP stuff a little too seriously.

“He’s probably heard it quite a few times,” Baker said. “Joey hears the whispers, but sometimes you gotta let a guy learn at his own pace.”

Paul Daugherty: I like RBI. I think RBI are important.

Arthur Koehler will testify that Daugherty indeed has a knot in his head.

I KIDNAPPED THE LINDBERGH BABY. Actually,  I wrote that a 3-hole hitter should drive in runs. Seems an obvious statement. Harmless, you know? Not to the metrics gurus.  I’m not getting into this, except to say it’s starting to get amusing. For suggesting RBIs are, you know, good, I am e-bombed by the SABR types… Apparently, I’m ignorant and lazy. I know nothing about baseball. Certainly not compared to them.

Well…

This happened before, several years ago, when I had the absolute gall to suggest that A. Dunn’s Ks were not exactly beneficial. The nice people posting at firejoemorgan.com told me how stupid I was then. Eh, so what, you know? Get out from behind your Mac and live a little.

The cool thing about baseball is there are any number of ways to measure a player’s success. Some of the new ways, I like. Some, I don’t. It’s an opinion. It is, as metrics high priest Bill James has said, a way to add enjoyment to watching a game. The metrics people have become like the fervid soccer crowd. If you disagree with them, you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you don’t like soccer, you’re stoopid. If you refuse to concede that getting on base is vital, but driving in people who are on base is trivial, you are plankton.

I don’t especially care what the higher life forms behind the laptops think. I like RBI. I think RBI are important. (So, by the way, do Jocketty, Baker and Brennaman. The former has a couple rings, the middleman has 1,600 wins and the latter has a plaque in an important place. Metrics guys have fast computers.) I will continue to think people who drive in runs are every bit as important as people who score them.

Silly, stupid me.

HHS: O’Connor: What Nerds Can Learn From Wedgies?

Uhh…avoid The (Bob) Melvin at all cost?

Could Dustin Ackley actually have performed worse because of advanced baseball metrics?  Was he on fangraphs late at night looking at his ground ball percentage and his BABIP and wondering if his successes were flukes or his shortcomings were surmountable?  It’s possible, as Ackley is young and plays in a progressive city and just might hear terms like WAR and wOBA tossed around at home and around the batting cage.

More likely, though, Ackley goes about his job largely ignorant of the numbers that claimed he was worthless (though baseball-reference and fangraphs sure liked his defense and baserunning).  Like other non-pitchers, he spends time on the field working on turning ground balls into outs and getting himself on base.

And that’s just it.  It appears that Wedge’s reference to sabermetrics really runs no deeper than on-base percentage.

...We all know Wedge is not alone as a baseball insider questioning the validity of more advanced research and its encroachment on the game, particularly in the front offices from which he receives his marching orders.  When outsiders suggest that a team could be better managed by restructuring lineups, platooning more, or using relief pitchers differently, we’re certainly prone to overlooking the impact of these changes on the actual human beings playing the game.  I’m sure the Reds would win more games if Joey Votto hit second and Zack Cozart hit… I don’t know… 84th, but how would Votto react to being told he needs to leave what he’s always been told is the “heart of the order”?

But does this insider/outsider dichotomy really apply to Ackley’s situation?

I suppose it’s possible that Dustin Ackley knew he was worth close to 3 WAR in his rookie year (3.7 per b-r and 2.9 per fangraphs), then less valuable in 2012 (2.8 and 1.1, respectively) and basically worthless in 2013, and that knowledge crawled under his skin and robbed him of whatever focus and drive made him a valuable player in 2011.  It’s more possible that Ackley was a bit of a mirage in 2011 and when his bat regressed the following season, his career took the same route as so many careers before his, including his manager’s.  This outsider thinks sabermetrics played more of a role in Wedge’s bosses’ decision to demote Ackley than in Ackley’s failures.

Miles: Going long with Hoyer on walks and OBP

While we’re waiting, let’s do this today. Yesterday, GM Jed Hoyer talked a lot about the Cubs’ lack of walks and the importance of on-base percentage in the OPS equation. We couldn’t get to all of it in the paper, so let’s get to some of it here on the blog.

The Cubs still are last in the National League in walks drawn by their batters, with 116. The Brewers are above them, with 122. In their last four games, however, the Cubs have drawn 15 walks. They’re 12th in the NL in OBP (.300) and eighth in OPS (.708).

In walk percentage, Joey Votto and Shin-Soo Choo of the Reds are 1-2. Votto is at 18.1 percent and Choo is at 15.8 percent. The Cubs bring up the rear. Alfonso Soriano and Welington Castillo are last among qualifiers at 3.2 percent. Starlin Castro is fifth worst (4.0).

“If you look at the Reds and you look at the Cubs, the hits, the power, aren’t any different,” Hoyer said. “The difference is the walks. They’re second in runs, I believe, and we’re near the bottom. It’s simply a lack of getting on base. It’s something we have to solve collectively. As an organization, Theo (team president Epstein) and I believe strongly you can’t be good team if you don’t get on base, grind out at-bats. If we’re not going to do that, we’re going to spend a lot of time figuring it out because we’re not going to be successful until we do.”

Hoyer was asked about drafting and developing hitters who are patient and with good approaches.

“That’s one of the things we always talk about: Is patience and working a good at-bat, is that something that’s taught? Is that something that’s innate? That’s something we’re certainly going to look for extensively in the draft and internationally, guys that manage an at-bat. But those guys aren’t going to help us right now. We need to figure out the solution on the field. We’re teaching the right things. We’re telling them the right things. I know guys are working hard at it. We need to see improvement there. That’s an area of the season that hasn’t gone the way we wanted to, and we’re going to need to solve that.”

Thanks to Chet.

Gleeman: Eric Wedge blames sabermetrics for Dustin Ackley’s struggles

Ack–Ack…INCOMING!

Dustin Ackley was a college star at North Carolina and the No. 2 overall pick in the 2009 draft, one spot after Stephen Strasburg. He moved quickly through the Mariners’ farm system, had a solid rookie season in 2011 at age 23 … and has hit .221 with a .600 OPS in 198 games since then.

Yesterday the Mariners demoted him to Triple-A and in discussing the move afterward manager Eric Wedge more or less blamed sabermetrics for Ackley’s struggles. Seriously, via Greg Johns of MLB.com:

  Wedge was talking about Ackley’s demotion to Triple-A and his mental approach, and he intimated that Ackley might have been too concerned with pitch selectivity and high on-base percentage, leading to a one-liner that hit on one of baseball’s most intriguing ongoing philosophical battles.

  “It’s the new generation. It’s all this sabermetrics stuff, for lack of a better term, you know what I mean?” Wedge said. “People who haven’t played since they were 9 years old think they have it figured out. It gets in these kids’ heads.”